POX Controller and Open Flow Performance Evaluation in Software Defined Networks (SDN) Using Mininet Emulator

Abstract

Growing popularity of Internet demands for the agility as well as the flexibility of computer networks. Traditional networking system is unable to satisfy recent computing needs. Proprietary devices configured manually create an error-prone situation in addition they are incapable to fully utilize the capability of physical network infrastructure. This has resulted in the paradigm shift in the networking industry and it is known as Software defined networking. Advantages such as programmability, task virtualization and easy management of the network can be provided by employing SDN platform, on the other hand POX is defined as a Python based open source OpenFlow SDN Controller mainly used for faster development and prototyping of new network applications basically comes pre-installed with the mininet virtual machine. POX controller can turn dumb OpenFlow devices into hub, switch, load balancer and firewall devices. In this paper Performance metrics such as service Delay, utilized bandwidth, received packets and bytes were measured and recorded using network monitoring tools like iperf and D-ITG in order to analyze the functionality of the POX controller as well as to evaluate the operation performance of POX controller for SDN environment. The results of this research were the recommendation of using POX controller in for rapid development and prototyping of network control systems as well as being the framework for the interaction with Open Flow switches.